


200 years of waiting.

by RedStarFiction



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7418899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedStarFiction/pseuds/RedStarFiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I recently applied to be a Mod over at ImagineClaireandJamie on Tumblr and was given two prompts to fill. Sadly I wasn't selected to be a Mod this time but they chose a couple of really awesome writers whose work I cannot wait to read! Here is the first prompt I filled:</p>
            </blockquote>





	200 years of waiting.

Claire held Brianna firmly on her lap, cheek resting gently against the copper silk of the little girl’s hair. Bree had been asleep for nearly twenty minutes but Claire could not bear to put her into bed yet. She needed to maintain her connection to her child … Jamie’s child … Jamie.  
Claire closed her eyes and willed the tears not to fall, she had shed so many today and if Frank saw her eyes puffy and red rimmed he would question her and no matter how kindly he meant it, she couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him about this.  
The small black and white poster with Claire smiling out at the world had been a little shock and the guilt she had felt for what Frank had gone through following her disappearance had resurfaced painfully. She had traced her fingertips over the word missing several times and made up her mind to pick up a particularly good piece of steak at the market tomorrow and to wear the small gold earrings he had bought her last Christmas which still sat in their pretty little box in her dresser drawer.  
It was as she was tucking the slightly faded poster away that another caught her eye and made her forget about steak and earrings and the rest of the world altogether. It was a standard white piece of paper with a rough sketch of a man’s face done in either charcoal or some dark pencil. The words ‘large build, tall, kilt’ were written above the face and Claire had stared at them dumbly before dropping her eyes back to the drawing.  
It wasn’t a good likeness, the eyes were too round and the nose too long but the mouth … that sweet wide mouth that had kissed her lips and whispered her name, curved in the most brilliant smile and tight with silent fury … she knew that mouth and she had no idea why whoever had sketched him knew it too.  
On the back in faint scratchy penmanship was a brief account of how a man resembling the individual pictured had been 'staring up at the window watching the missing Mrs Claire Randall brush her hair the night before Mrs Randall disappeared'. The individual had been briefly witnessed by one Mr Frank Randall. Large build, tall, kilt.   
Below this was a far more recent note, one word, written in Frank’s hand: Brianna?  
Claire had stuffed the paper back in with the others and blindly stumbled out of the room, barely navigating the stairs without injury, coming to a stop at the liqueur cabinet and not even bothering with one of the dainty crystal glasses as she seized the ten-year old malt and raised the bottle to her lips, drawing deep.  
Now as she sat with Bree cradled in her lap, the memory of his voice came to her as clearly as her daughter’s gentle snores:  
“I will find you, I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you – then that is my punishment.”  
This time Claire did not try to force the tears away and not for the first time, though she would never remember it, as Brianna stirred in her mother’s arms, she felt her mother’s arms tighten around her and the words “Oh, Jamie.” Fall from her lips like a prayer.


End file.
